Gratitude Game

This week I was responsible for a Thanksgiving activity for a group of 40 kids, and we played this fun Gratitude Game. While planning the activity, I really wanted to help the children focus on things that the are grateful for in their lives. I wanted them to go beyond the list of typical answers and really thing about things that they appreciate in their lives.

The first activity I asked them to do was create these Gratitude Journal envelopes. I printed out a gratitude prompt for each of the days in November. They cut them out and made their own envelopes to store the prompts in. I encouraged them to pull out the card for each day throughout the month of November and record the things they are grateful for all month long.

Gratitude Journal Prompt Envelopes

1. Print the Gratitude Journal Writing Prompts.
2. Print the Envelope Template on a sheet of colored paper.
3. Fold the thin tabs in first. Then fold the largest tab over the top of the folded smallest tabs. Glue the large tab to the outside of the small folded tabs. Then fold the top tab down to complete your envelope.
4. Cut out the Gratitude Journal Writing Prompts, and stack them in order. Slide them into the envelope.

Gratitude Game

When the kids were done creating their gratitude journal envelopes, we were ready to play our gratitude game. I loved this cute gratitude game from Teach Beside Me, but we wanted to do our own little twist on it.

*Cute turkey clip art provided by the always amazing EduClips. 

Here’s what we did:

To Play in a Group:

1. I broke the kids up into groups of 5-8 and had them sit in a circle.
2. Next I game them each a pack a Skittles, with the corner cut off, and a Gratitude Game Turkey Card.
3. The kids passed the Skittles pack around the circle, pushing one Skittle out at a time. When it was their turn to get a Skittle, they had to say something they were thankful for that matched the list from the Gratitude Game Turkey Card.
4. To make it even more fun, we did a NO REPEATS rule. That meant the longer we played, the harder they had to think to come up with things they were thankful for.

The children loved it, and asked for another bag of Skittles when the first one ran out.

To Play on Your Own:

I love this idea for a take home activity too. You could purchase snack size packs of Skittles, staple the mini game cards to each pack, and send them with the children. They could play this game while they are waiting for dinner on Thanksgiving day or whenever they need a thankful moment.

Thank you for stopping by to check out these fun activities. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and have a fantastic month of Thanksgiving!